Fidelis Zitterbart
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

Fidelis Zitterbart Jr. (April 8, 1845 – August 30, 1915) was an American composer.


Life and works

Zitterbart was born in
Pittsburgh Pittsburgh ( ) is a city in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, United States, and its county seat. It is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, second-most populous city in Pennsylvania (after Philadelphia) and the List of Un ...
in 1845. His father, Fidelis Zitterbart Sr. had emigrated from Austria, and was a career violinist and conductor, who taught his son music from an early age. At the age of 16 the young Zitterbart went abroad to Dresden, where he studied with Francois Schubert and Julius Rühlmann, to complete his musical studies there. Upon his return to the US, he worked as a violinist and violist in NY until 1873 when he returned to Pittsburgh and took a teaching position at the Andrew Williams American Conservatory of Music until the closure of the Conservatory compelled him to start his own music school, the Zitterbart Conservatory. In 1868 he married Catherine Riedl of Worcester, MA (1850-1913) and together they had 4 children. His father, who had composed as well, tore up his compositions upon seeing that the compositions of his son outshone his own. Zitterbart composed more than a thousand compositions, nearly all of them remained unpublished during his lifetime. In 1930, his son Ralph Zitterbart donated the manuscripts to the
University of Pittsburgh The University of Pittsburgh (Pitt) is a Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The university is composed of seventeen undergraduate and graduate schools and colle ...
following suggestions from Dr. Theodore M. Finney, a musicologist and Dr. Alexander Silverman, a chemist who had studied violin with Zitterbart. The digitized collection is available online. His compositions included several large-scale works, including "symphonies, concertos, operas, sonatas, 125 string quartets (plus 100 earlier quartets he had thrown away) and dozens of overtures, particularly on Shakespearean themes - ''
Macbeth ''The Tragedy of Macbeth'', often shortened to ''Macbeth'' (), is a tragedy by William Shakespeare, estimated to have been first performed in 1606. It dramatises the physically violent and damaging psychological effects of political ambiti ...
'', ''
Iago Iago () is a fictional character in Shakespeare's '' Othello'' (c. 1601–1604). Iago is the play's main antagonist and Othello's standard-bearer. He is the husband of Emilia who is in turn the attendant of Othello's wife Desdemona. Iago ha ...
'' and ''
Richard III Richard III (2 October 1452 – 22 August 1485) was King of England from 26 June 1483 until his death in 1485. He was the last king of the Plantagenet dynasty and its cadet branch the House of York. His defeat and death at the Battle of Boswor ...
''". He also composed several works for
viola The viola ( , () ) is a string instrument of the violin family, and is usually bowed when played. Violas are slightly larger than violins, and have a lower and deeper sound. Since the 18th century, it has been the middle or alto voice of the ...
, including, in 1875, the first known American
viola sonata The viola sonata is a sonata for viola, sometimes with other instruments, usually piano. The earliest viola sonatas are difficult to date for a number of reasons: *in the Baroque era, there were many works written for the viola da gamba, includin ...
, and another 12 more after that. Wikipedia's list of compositions for viola has a partial listing of these compositions for viola.


External links


Digitized Manuscripts at the University of Pittsburgh Library
* Works by Fidelis Zitterbart at International Music Score Library Project (imslp)
Information about works for Viola at Music4Viola


References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Zitterbart, Fidelis 19th-century American classical composers 1845 births 1915 deaths American classical violists Military personnel from Pittsburgh American male composers Classical musicians from Pennsylvania 20th-century American classical composers 19th-century American male musicians 20th-century American male musicians American male classical violinists 19th-century classical violinists 20th-century American classical violinists 19th-century violists 20th-century violists